


The Garden, Dusk

by tiltedsyllogism



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Aging, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, Sherlock Holmes's Retirement, Sussex, Wits On Tap Challenge, poetry remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 08:10:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14613693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiltedsyllogism/pseuds/tiltedsyllogism
Summary: John and Sherlock begin to come to terms with Sherlock's diagnosis.





	The Garden, Dusk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unreconstructedfangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unreconstructedfangirl/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Happiness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3479741) by [unreconstructedfangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unreconstructedfangirl/pseuds/unreconstructedfangirl). 



> This is a remix of the first chapter of [unreconstructedfangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unreconstructedfangirl/pseuds/unreconstructedfangirl)'s lovely retirementlock story Happiness (though readers of that story will notice that I couldn't help cribbing a line from ch2 -- it was too beautiful to pass up.)
> 
> Written in the style of Stephen Dunn, whose poem Happiness serves as the epigraph for the original work.

It was among the flowers, erupting joyously   
from the rich black earth,  
that the tremble came: not the first nor the fifth,

but the one we could not ignore. It was   
a withering out of season, but   
he knew, as any student of nature must,

that there will always eventually be twilight.  
To give away  
The power of naming the cloudy accumulations

that will cast cobwebs on his mind and blur our joint horizon  
is a heavy one, for  
am I not my lover’s keeper? And yet, and yet—

still, I find, he has need of me,   
just as my own need is unchanged. As I knew it would be.  
We can never really know what it’s supposed to feel like, being alive.  
We can only know what we know.


End file.
